Ephesians Chapter 2 verse 14 Holy Bible

Ephesians 2 : 14 Bible Verse Songs

• Forgiven by Sovereign Grace Music

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 14. - For he is our peace. Explanatory of the preceding verse - of the way by which we are brought nigh. Christ is not only our Peacemaker, but our Peace, and that in the fullest sense, the very substance and living spring of it, establishing it at the beginning, keeping it up to the end; and the complex notion of peace is here not only peace between Jew and Gentile, but between God and both. Consult Old Testament predictions of peace in connection with Messiah (Isaiah 9:5, 6; Micah 5:5; Zechariah 9:10, etc.). Who made both one; literally, both things, both elements; so that there is now no ground for separating between a Jewish element and a Gentile; they are unified. And broke down the middle wall of the partition. The general idea is obvious; the particular allusion is less easily seen. Some think it is to the veil that separated the holy of holies from the holy place (Hebrews 10:20); but that could hardly be called a wall. Others the wall that separated the court of the Jew from that of the Gentiles; but that wall was literally standing when the apostle wrote, and besides, the Ephesians could not be supposed to be so familiar with it as to make it a suitable illustration for them. In the absence of any specific allusion, it is best to understand the words generally, "broke down that which served as a middle wall of partition" - what is mentioned immediately in the following verse.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(2 b.) Ephesians 2:14-18 pass on from the description of the call of the heathen to personal union with God in Christ, to dwell on the perfect unity and equality of Jew and Gentile with each other in Him, and the access of both to the Father.(14) He (Himself) is our peace.--There is clearly allusion, as to the many promises in the Old Testament of the "Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:5-6, et al.), so still more to the "Peace of Earth" of the angelic song of Bethlehem, and to the repeated declarations of our Lord, such as, "Peace I leave with you: My peace I give unto you." Here, however, only is our Lord called not the giver of peace, but the peace itself--His own nature being the actual tie of unity between God and mankind, and between man and man. Through the whole passage thus introduced there runs a double meaning, a declaration of peace in Christ between Jew and Gentile, and between both and God; though it is not always easy to tell of any particular expression, whether it belongs to this or that branch of the meaning, or to both. It is well to compare it with the obvious parallel in Colossians 2:13-14, where (in accordance with the whole genius of that Epistle) there is found only the latter branch of the meaning, the union of all with the Head, not the unity of the various members of the Body.Who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.--In this verse the former subject is begun. The reunion of Jew and Gentile is described in close connection with the breaking down of "the middle wall of the partition" (or, hedge). The words "between us" are not in the original, and Chrysostom interprets the partition as being, not between Jew and Gentile, but between both and God. But the former idea seems at any rate to predominate in this clause. Whether "the middle wall of the hedge" refers to the wall separating the court of the Gentiles from the Temple proper (Jos. Ant. xv. ? 5), and by an inscription denouncing death to any alien who passed it (see Lewin's St. Paul, vol. ii., p. 133), or to the "hedge" set about the vineyard of the Lord (Isaiah 5:2; comp. Matthew 22:33)--to which probably the Jewish doctors alluded when they called their ceremonial and legal subtleties "the hedge" of the Law--has been disputed. It may, however, be noted that the charge of bringing Trophimus, an Ephesian, beyond that Temple wall had been the cause of St. Paul's apprehension at Jerusalem (Acts 21:29), and nearly of his death. Hence the Asiatic churches might well be familiar with its existence. It is also notable that this Temple-partition suits perfectly the double sense of this passage: for, while it was primarily a separation between Jew and Gentile, it was also the first of many partitions--of which the "veil of the Temple" was the last--cutting all men off from the immediate presence of God. At our Lord's death the last of these partitions was rent in twain; how much more may that death be described as breaking down the first! . . .